Sarah has been a Londoner since the age of 14. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters degree in Victorian Studies, from Birkbeck College, University of London.
Her book The Blackest Streets was published by Bodley Head in June 2008 and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize in May 2009; it was a Book of the Year in the Sunday Telegraph and The Economist and for BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review programme. Her debut, The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London, was published in 2004 and was shortlisted for the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction.

She lives in central London and is currently working on her third book - about 19th-century asylums.